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Tokyo's PS3 Launch

Jonti is on the scene as thousands line up to get their hands on Sony's new console.

The PlayStation 3 launched in Japan on Saturday, November 11. Only 80,000 units were available nationwide, and Tokyo received the largest share. We were able to pick up a unit in Shinjuku at Yodobashi Camera, but many others were left disappointed as the level of demand far outstripped supply.

There was a queue of more than 1,500 outside the Shinjuku Bic Camera store and another 1,000 lined up outside Yodobashi Camera. Queues only began to form in Shinjuku on Friday evening, with stores opening at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning to serve PS3 buyers before they opened for usual business with other customers. Only a few stores in the city sold PS3s on a first come, first served basis -- Yodobashi in Shinjuku and Bic Camera in Ikebukuro among them.

In most locations around Tokyo, however, retailers operated a lottery system where people could queue for a ticket which then enabled them to enter a prize drawing. The prize was the right to buy a PlayStation 3. As the majority of stores hadn't been accepting pre-orders of any kind, most gamers were forced through this lottery procedure.

One of the reasons why retailers adopted this system was to ensure fair distribution of the new machine, in light of a large Chinese presence at previous launches. Again, this time out, a significant percentage of those in line were from China. And the majority of them seemed to be here in order to buy PS3s and then sell them at online auction sites for a quick profit.

Of all those we spoke to, only about two-thirds were in line for a PS3 because they actually wanted a system for their own personal use. Ridge Racer 7 and Resistance were the most desired launch titles, with Gundam following just behind. Early sales figures suggest that was the actual order of popularity, with Genji and Sega Golf Club taking very few sales (only around 3,000 copies in Golf Club's case).

There had been very little fanfare prior to the launch -- PS3 TV ads only began to run in Japan last week -- but the newly erected PS3 demo kiosks were attracting a fair amount of attention late last week. In Shinjuku, the epicentre of the PS3's Japanese launch, interest in PlayStation 3 setups eventually led to a whole street being blocked as passers-by stopped to look at the same time that gamers arrived to queue for the launch.